6580 Results for “production”
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“Part Emulation and Part Making Shit Up”: Amanda Kramer on Give Me Pity!
A woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg) appears on a soundstage for her Saturday night television special. Like the tireless performers who came before her, St. Claire will spend the duration of the broadcast showcasing elaborate outfits, dramatic monologues, groan-worthy jokes, peppy musical numbers and an assortment of special guests (some human and others canine). Tonight is either her big break or the conclusion of a descent into madness—either way, don’t dare change that channel! Give Me Pity!, the latest film from director Amanda Kramer, is a warped take on variety show […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 27, 2023 -
“Coming of Age Is a Lifelong Process”: Jennifer Reeder on Perpetrator
“I have no shame saying that on some level, I’ve kind of been making the same film over and over,” writer-director Jennifer Reeder tells me on a recent Zoom call. We’re speaking ahead of the Berlinale premiere of Perpetrator, the anticipated follow-up to her 2019 feature debut Knives and Skin, a horror-tinged teen noir that centers on the disappearance of a high school-aged girl and the reckoning that it brings to a Midwestern town’s inhabitants, particularly the girl’s mother and her teenage friend group. Perpetrator iterates a similar narrative trajectory, this time with a distinct genre sensibility. Precocious 17-year-old Jonny […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 23, 2023 -
“The ‘Micro-Budget Apocalypse Now“: Gary Huggins On His “Cursed” Debut, Kick Me
A self-described “knock-knock joke ten years in the making,” Gary Huggins’ debut feature Kick Me has to be seen to be believed. The film ostensibly tells the story of a high school guidance counselor who goes into Kansas City, Kansas one night to buy a pet bunny and meet with a delinquent student before attending his daughter’s choral concert. But nothing — and I mean nothing — goes as planned. What unfolds instead is an (often funny) nightmare freakshow featuring three-legged dogs, maniacal Winnebago-driving swingers, geriatric drug dealers, abandoned shopping malls and jenkem huffers that makes Scorsese’s After Hours seem […]
by Paul Harrill on Feb 20, 2023 -
Berlinale 2023: A Very Long Gif, Our Body and Orlando, My Political Biography
My Berlinale 2023 started with a trip down Eduardo Williams’ digestive tubes. Much of the material in A Very Long Gif, a single-channel installation included in the Forum Expanded exhibition, was captured with a capsule endoscopy camera. This minuscule device is swallowed like a pill and journeys through one’s gastrointestinal tract, taking thousands of pictures along the way. Effectively, it records a traveling shot at a frame rate of two or three images per second. Williams ingested one himself and condensed its eight-hour passage into a 75-minute sequence, which is looped and projected on a wall in a large round […]
by Giovanni Marchini Camia on Feb 20, 2023 -
“Second by Second, She is Trying to Game Out What to Say Next…”: Writer/Director Tina Satter on Her Sydney Sweeney-Starring Berlin Premiere, Reality
Tina Satter’s Reality opens with a high-angle shot of its eponymous heroine, Reality Winner, her blonde head poking up amongst a stretch of cubicle dividers in a Georgia NSA facility. It’s 2017 and above her on the walls are an array of television monitors, chyrons blaring, all tuned to the latest news about James Comey’s Congressional testimony regarding Russian election interference. The channel is Fox, and you don’t have to be at any particular place on the political spectrum to view this work environment as already an abusive one. Winner works translating Farsi to English, a task that requires sensitivity, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 20, 2023 -
“Someone Said I Should Be Publicly Executed”: Alex Phillips on All Jacked Up and Full of Worms
The psychedelic potency of fictional invertebrates is pure nightmare fuel in Alex Phillips’s feature debut All Jacked Up and Full of Worms. Yet worms alone don’t drive the film’s deviant characters past the brink of sanity. Rather, the creature’s hallucinogenic properties serve as unfortunate conduits for their most depraved intrusive thoughts. There’s no shortage of gross-out bodily functions and overtly taboo images on display here—milky vomit, slimy appendages, an infant sex doll which must have put Phillips or another crew member on some sort of watchlist. Yet somehow, Worms doesn’t feel like just another piece of dirtbag, edgelord cinema. It’s […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 17, 2023 -
Rotterdam 2023: Three-and-a-Half Days of the Tiger
I was lucky to see two films I liked upon arriving for my first IRL International Film Festival Rotterdam: with a limited timeframe of three-and-a-half days, starting strong put me in a desirably pleasant and more-receptive-than-usual mindset, even if my fortunate choices seemed mostly like beginner’s luck. The festival’s extremely public firing last year of most of its senior and longstanding programmers led, whether out of solidarity (either publicly stated or more quietly expressed via networks of mutuals) or lack of enthusiasm about the resulting lineup, to some regular attendees sitting it out. When I arrived a third of the way […]
by Vadim Rizov on Feb 14, 2023 -
How to Maintain Your Body in the Camera Department According to Movement Specialist Liz Cash
In “The Body is a Tool,” I talked with DPs and camera operators about the routines they developed to maintain their bodies against taxingly long days on set. When even film workers’ unions provide few resources to prevent bodily harm, crew members create their own devices, so methods of self-preservation tend to vary greatly. This was true of both the four camera people I talked with for the article and many of the set workers I’ve encountered in production. In this environment, a Steadicam operator might recommend a vest for no reason other than it worked for them personally. There are […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 10, 2023 -
Brandon Harris Curates “Strange Fruit” Series at Metrograph in Honor of Black History Month
Brandon Harris—an educator, programmer, author, producer, director, executive as well as a longtime contributing editor at Filmmaker—has curated a series at Metrograph in commemoration of Black History Month. Entitled “Strange Fruit,” the series features an impressive slate of titles spanning several decades, from Pierre Chenal’s black and white Argentine drama Native Son to Billy Woodberry’s seminal L.A. Rebellion film Bless Their Little Hearts. The opening night selection, which played on Sunday, February 5, was Elvis Mitchell’s NYFF-premiering essay film Is That Black Enough for You?!? Several special screenings have also been programmed, including Del Lord’s 1927 silent film Topsy and Eva […]
by Natalia Keogan on Feb 8, 2023 -
“An Escape to the Coolest Boho Pad on the Beach”: DP Tim Cragg on The Deepest Breath
Italian freediver Alessia Zecchini and Irish safety diver Stephen Keenan set their sights on the famous Blue Hole located 184 feet below the Red Sea in The Deepest Breath from documentary filmmaker Laura McGann. Hell-bent on breaking a new world record, Alessia trains to make the seemingly impossible oceanic descent by holding one single breath without the aid of any scuba gear. Cinematographer Tim Cragg discusses his artistic vision on the shoot, which also featured technological complications. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 6, 2023
